He still maintained:  “I can swear to you that I am not!”

She laughed so impertinently that he felt his heart beat and a chill run down his back.  For the third time he said: 

“I should have seen it!”

She rose, still laughing in the same manner.  She slammed the door and left the room, saying:  “Well! if that isn’t too much!”

Bondel remained alone, ill at ease.  That insolent, provoking laugh had touched him to the quick.  He went outside, walked, dreamed.  The realization of the loneliness of his new life made him sad and morbid.  The neighbor, whom he had met that morning, came to him with outstretched hands.  They continued their walk together.  After touching on various subjects they came to talk of their wives.  Both seemed to have something to confide, something inexpressible, vague, about these beings associated with their lives; their wives.  The neighbor was saying: 

“Really, at times, one might think that they bear some particular ill-will toward their husband, just because he is a husband.  I love my wife—­I love her very much; I appreciate and respect her; well! there are times when she seems to have more confidence and faith in our friends than in me.”

Bondel immediately thought:  “There is no doubt; my wife was right!”

When he left this man he began to think things over again.  He felt in his soul a strange confusion of contradictory ideas, a sort of interior burning; that mocking, impertinent laugh kept ringing in his ears and seemed to say:  “Why; you are just the same as the others, you fool!” That was indeed bravado, one of those pieces of impudence of which a woman makes use when she dares everything, risks everything, to wound and humiliate the man who has aroused her ire.  This poor man must also be one of those deceived husbands, like so many others.  He had said sadly:  “There are times when she seems to have more confidence and faith in our friends than in me.”  That is how a husband formulated his observations on the particular attentions of his wife for another man.  That was all.  He had seen nothing more.  He was like the rest—­all the rest!

And how strangely Bondel’s own wife had laughed as she said:  “You, too —­you, too.”  How wild and imprudent these creatures are who can arouse such suspicions in the heart for the sole purpose of revenge!

He ran over their whole life since their marriage, reviewed his mental list of their acquaintances, to see whether she had ever appeared to show more confidence in any one else than in himself.  He never had suspected any one, he was so calm, so sure of her, so confident.

But, now he thought of it, she had had a friend, an intimate friend, who for almost a year had dined with them three times a week.  Tancret, good old Tancret, whom he, Bendel, loved as a brother and whom he continued to see on the sly, since his wife, he did not know why, had grown angry at the charming fellow.